Pre-heat your car in winter without running the engine

Motorists that leave their engine running while they defrost their windscreen waste almost £50m of fuel ever year and risk having their cars stolen. Many, while fully aware this practise is a false economy, carry on regardless in the misguided belief they have no alternative – but there is a solution.

This little gizmo can heat your cabin every day without the need to switch the engine on

Eberspächer UK is offering two types of pre-heater kit that can warm your car without the need to turn your engine on, or to get out of bed, for that matter. The first, the Hydronic water heater, pre-heats both the engine and the cabin. The second, known as the Airtronic air heater, is a simple unit that draws in cool air, heats it up and pipes it into the passenger compartment.

The Hydronic system is ideal for those who want to warm up their engines as well as their passenger cabins before they set off. A small amount of fuel is fed into the Hydronic unit, a burner motor starts and a fan pumps hot air into a chamber. Hot gases are fed through a heat exchanger and that heats the coolant already in your engine, with residual heat escaping through the vents in the cabin. The Airtronic system works in a similar fashion, except air is pumped directly into the cabin.

Both systems can be operated manually inside the vehicle, using a timer or by remote control. Both the Hydronic and Airtronic modules can be fitted to new vehicles or retro-fitted to older cars. The average price of installation, say Eberspächer, is “less than £1,000”. That’s not cheap, admittedly, but it’s probably a price worth considering for those who want to feel more comfortable in the mornings without putting their car at risk of being stolen.